The Old Enemy: A Novel

By Henry Porter

The ex-MI6 agent is on the run as he uncovers a deadly conspiracy reaching back to the days of Cold War espionage in this acclaimed thriller series.
 
Former MI6 agent Paul Samson is shadowing a young woman around London for a private security company. Though the brilliant Zoe Freemantle is intriguing, the work is a bit dull—until Samson is almost killed by a thuggish assassin. When other people connected to Paul come under attack, including legendary spy Robert Harland and billionaire Denis Hisami, Paul escapes to Estonia to make sense of the mysterious threat.
 
Paul knows there’s a target on his back. The only question is whose finger is on the trigger. Together with Denis’s wife Anastasia, Paul picks up the trail of a former Stasi agent whose network of assets go deep into the US and UK governments. Now, Paul and Anastasia must expose the spymaster before any more people are killed or agencies compromised.
 
An astonishing and timely thriller examining the penetration of Russian assets into all levels of western life, The Old Enemy is a complex, breathtaking race against time from “one of our most accomplished thriller writers” (Financial Times).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9780802158666

Book preview

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

Berlin Blue

He had made it into the spring – three months longer than they gave him. And here he was, out on the peninsula in the early-morning light, feeling okay and in some ways happier than he’d ever been, though, of course, it was not Robert Harland’s custom to examine his state of mind too closely. He was alive and painting – that was enough. And a kilometre away, on this crooked finger of land that pointed north into the Baltic, his wife, Ulrike, was at their cabin, by now tucked into her spot between the porch and timbered wall, sheltered from the wind. She’d have a book in her hands and a shawl around her and she’d be looking out to sea, sometimes peering at the insects that were blown round the porch and came to rest beside her on the bench.

In a moment he’d sit in the camp chair and maybe smoke one of the three cigarettes in the breast pocket of the old field-coat he wore, ignoring her strictures without much thought. For there was work to be done to the small oil sketch in front of him, which, like the others in the series, had been executed rapidly with some of the basic colours of the seascape mixed the night before. He looked up. The continent of cloud suspended over the ocean was about to deliver shafts of light that would reflect from the sea and spread through the spray-mist above the waves. With a brush clamped between his teeth and more brushes and a palette in his hands, the old spy waited, looking and looking, hardly breathing.

---

Ulrike would never know what made her open her eyes at that moment. She was plunged in the terrible finality of their time together, these days of being alone when, if Bobby was feeling strong, he would go out early with his paraphernalia loaded on to the light handcart that he was so pleased with, returning only when he was too tired to carry on, or he’d finished the painting. In the evenings, they were together. She’d cook – not much, because his appetite had gone – and he’d sit with a whisky looking at the day’s painting and peering intently across the scrub to the sea. Later, they’d lie in bed, mesmerised by the dancing shadows thrown by an oil lamp, the smell of which filled the cabin. Sometimes they’d go back to events three decades before in Leipzig and Berlin and, later, in Tallinn – the cities that marked chapters in their lives – and to the people they’d known and lost, and occasionally murmuring their love for each other. When he slept, she kept watch, wondering what she’d do when he was gone; what it would it be like without him beside her. Before dropping off the night before, he’d muttered, almost angrily, ‘I’m sorry, I had no idea this would be so ghastly for you!’ And, grazing her forehead with his lips, ‘You know that no one is more loved than you? You know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said eventually, and, using the German for her usual reply, ‘Ja, und ich liebe dich auch,’ – and I love you, too – then she asked, ‘Are you happy out here? You don’t want to be doing anything else? Go home?’ She worried he was pressuring himself, because he was so short-tempered in the mornings.

‘The work’s got to be done.’ He’d been promised an exhibition in late May and he knew that was what kept him going. He needed twenty-four decent canvases to add to the works on paper that were already framed at the gallery in Tallinn. She reckoned he had nineteen, maybe twenty-two at a push. He wasn’t so sure.

He slept, but she did not, so now she dozed in her spot, smelling the resin in the wood heating up when the sun came out. The only sound came from a lark suspended in the sky, way off to her right, and the wind nudging the porch door. What made her start she could not say. But she sat up, filled with alarm. She shielded her eyes against the light and looked around. A figure was moving purposefully along the track by the shore; hard to make out because of the dark rocks, but occasionally a silhouette flashed against the breaking waves. She stepped inside and unhooked the binoculars they’d inherited with the cabin and trained them through the kitchen window. This individual, certainly a man, was carrying something, but not fishing gear, not a hiker’s backpack, not even the wildfowler’s shotgun under his arm; more like a case slung over his shoulder. She lost then found him again and, without thinking, pulled her phone off the charging lead, went outside and dialled her husband’s number. The call didn’t go through. She moved to a rise a few metres away and phoned again. This time the call was successfull but he didn’t answer. She waited a few moments, because there wasn’t anywhere with better coverage, and searched the shoreline with the binoculars, but saw nothing. She dialled and this time got through but was cut off. Then she dialled again.

---

He felt the vibration in his pocket but didn’t answer. The clouds had spilled a pool of light and he had caught it because he was waiting and the few brushstrokes applied automatically were so certain. To respond to nature in real time, almost as quickly as film, was what he was still alive for and, when he got it absolutely right, it was thrilling. The second call came and he put the palette and brushes down on the collapsible table – another piece of equipment that gave him huge satisfaction – and fished out his phone, smearing the screen with the paint on his fingers. He could hear her moving and called out her name – maybe she had dialled him by mistake. But she spoke, breathless. He couldn’t hear her because of the noise of boots in the dead grass. He waited and implored her to stand still – Goddammit! – and speak to him. He heard the crunch of the hard-core track beneath her boots then she said something. ‘What?’ he bellowed. ‘I can’t hear you.’

‘Someone’s out there with you. I don’t like the look of him, Bobby. Where are you?’

‘Just beyond the wreck.’ He pushed up his blue tam-o’-shanter, looked around and saw nothing, except the light-fall from the clouds, which now had the faintest yellow tinge and made the spray glow. He caught his breath. It was too late to change his painting and, anyway, that was then; this was now. He grappled with the phone to take a photograph, hoping that he wouldn’t lose Ulrike. He took several because the scene was developing every second. Then he returned the phone to his ear: she had gone, so he called her back. ‘I can’t see anyone.’ But at that moment he spotted a man moving by the rocks at the water’s edge, right in line with an illuminated patch of sea. ‘Ah, I’ve got him!’ he exclaimed. The figure hesitated then moved off to the right to take the track to the lighthouse that ran across the peninsula between him and Ulrike. ‘He’s going the other way,’ he said, letting himself down into the camp chair. ‘Let’s have a brew-up! Come and join me. I want you to see what I’ve been doing. I think it’s rather good … well, it’s not bad.’ He was never sure what he felt about his work. Elation was often followed by a crash in spirits. She hung up and he reckoned he’d got about ten minutes to get the water boiling and smoke a cigarette. He leaned forward and yanked a camping stove from his bag, lit it and placed a small whistling kettle on the flame. There was just one enamel mug for them, but he had tea, milk and a silver-and-glass hip flask that he had inherited from his father, together with the taste for a dash of whisky in his tea. They often shared a mug beneath the Baltic sky, Ulrike making a rather too penetrating appraisal of his latest. She could go easy on him, he reflected, but that wasn’t her. He sat back and ran an eye over his work, an unlit cigarette in his hand. Some sketchiness in the foreground, where the paint was thin, worried him, but he decided he liked the effect, and he was glad he hadn’t done any more to the light on the sea. She’d stopped him overworking the scene.

The roar of the camp stove obliterated all other sound, so he would not hear her call out, which she always did with a wave when she reached the brow. He looked to his right and lit the cigarette discreetly, inhaled and let the smoke dribble from the corner of his mouth. It was stupid to pretend he didn’t smoke. What bloody harm could it do now? But it made her very angry indeed, because she quit her tiny ration of smokes when he received the diagnosis. He took another drag and leaned forward to remove the kettle, which was beginning to tremble on top of the stove. As he did so, something very powerful hit the aluminium frame of his chair and threw him on to the grass to his right. He rolled on to his front. A man was moving towards him, marching robotically, with the scope of a rifle pressed to his eye. A second shot hit the table and Harland thought, fucking amateur. But he had nothing to defend himself with, and nowhere to go and, besides, he wasn’t up to running, not over this ground, not with his lungs, not with his aching bones. All he hoped was that Ulrike wouldn’t witness this. He rolled again to search for his phone. He needed desperately to speak to her, to say he loved her, because this was it: they’d found him and, however incompetent the assassin, he would certainly take what little life remained to him.

The third shot tore across the back of his left calf. He writhed in the grass, as much from anger as pain, and at the same time realised the prescribed morphine was suppressing the effect. He’d started the course, without telling Ulrike, three days before when a deep internal pain made it hard to concentrate. He reached for his sketchbook, the pages of which were fluttering in the breeze, and, half noticing that the burner was on its side and scorching the grass very close to the turpentine container, he scrawled ‘Berlin Blue’ on the back of the pad, ringed the words, then wrote in block capitals ‘LOVE YOU’.

An idea flickered in his mind. He seized the turpentine bottle, unscrewed the top as he rolled on to his left side, which caused the pain from his leg to surge upwards. He didn’t yell out. Not now. Not after a life of fear and pain and self-control – he just waited. The man was twenty paces away: black beanie, an unexceptional, fleshy, mid-thirty-year-old face, gloves and dark brown lace-up military boots. He lowered the rifle. Why? To enjoy the moment, or make sure his rotten aim wouldn’t fail him again? Harland flung the bottle. It Catherine-wheeled through the air, spraying turps, and hit the man in the groin. He followed that with the burner, which fell short but did its job of lighting the turps on the ground around the man, and instantly his legs and midriff caught fire. Harland groaned an expletive and collapsed on to his back and looked at the sky. The heightened awareness that came from concentrating on nature, which always remained for an hour or so after stopping, was still with him, and the sky at that moment seemed impossibly beautiful. Four shots were loosed off chaotically, one of which entered his heart.

CHAPTER 2

GreenState

Paul Samson was familiar with her routine. Before leaving the sixties block on the fringes of Westminster, where GreenState’s campaign headquarters were housed, Zoe Freemantle would go over to the water cooler and fill her flask. She’d return to her desk, then work her phone and slip her laptop into her shoulder bag. After checking her phone a few times, she would get up without saying anything to those around her and head for the stairwell, which she used in preference to the lift. All this gave Samson a head start, and by the time she pushed through the double doors on to the street he was wearing his helmet and had started the bike. He was sure she hadn’t been trained in counter-surveillance, yet she was good. She would walk for about half a mile with her big stride and air of imperturbable self-possession until she suddenly stopped and got into the ride she’d hailed twenty minutes before. She never used the same rendezvous and always chose a spot where the driver could slip into what was for London relatively fast-moving traffic. She usually included a dry-cleaning move in the route and twice Samson had lost her because he couldn’t follow her on the bike, although without it there was little hope of keeping up with her. On this occasion, she walked along the Embankment and at the last moment jogged up the steps and into the main entrance of the Tate Gallery. Samson turned right and stopped on the street corner so he could watch the front and side entrances of the gallery simultaneously. Ten minutes later, he caught sight of her long suede coat ascending the steps at the far end of the side entrance. He followed her through Pimlico, past Victoria Station, to a small triangular park, which she crossed, and, on the far side, climbed into a silver Prius hybrid.

She retraced her route to Westminster. The car crawled through Parliament Square and headed east along the Embankment, towards the City of London. But just as it reached the intersection near Embankment station, he saw the rear door open and Zoe hop out and plunge into the crowds converging on the Underground station. It was a smart move. There was access to Charing Cross main-line station and two lines ran through the Underground station. He parked the bike and locked his helmet in the seat box, but it was already hopeless. There was no guarantee he would find her, or that she wouldn’t walk straight through the main-line station and exit towards Trafalgar Square. There was, as he had discovered when losing her twice before, little point following her on to the Tube. He would have to guess at her eventual destination, which a couple of times had been the Edgar Coach and Engineering Works, a large industrial building on an intersection known as the Junction, north of the City of London. She was probably headed there, so he would go there, too. And if she had given him the slip again, well, that was on her.

It was less than ninety seconds before he mounted his bike. He didn’t take particular note of a much more powerful bike that roared up with a pillion passenger and lingered under the rail bridge, but he would remember it later.

He arrived at the Junction twenty-five minutes later, stood the bike in a cobbled passageway called Cooper’s Court and entered the Lina Café and Bakery, diagonally across the intersection from the Edgar Building, which he had used on the two previous occasions. He certainly wondered what went on inside, but it wasn’t his task to investigate Zoe, or find out the reason she was at GreenState. He was employed to watch for any threat against her, report back and make sure she didn’t get hurt. He hardly saw himself as that kind of muscle and, in truth, the job was rather below him, but Macy Harp, head of the private-intelligence firm Hendricks Harp that he often worked for, said it required brains and a keen eye. Besides, he’d negotiated a very good rate with the individual who wanted to keep Zoe Freemantle alive. He stressed over and over that it was a question of life and death, although he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say what the threat was.

Samson found her on social media under her cover name, Ingrid Cole. As far as he could see, Zoe Freemantle had no presence whatever. Ingrid, however, was on three big platforms, a dedicated environmentalist, animal lover and climate-change activist who frequently linked to her own website. This consisted mostly of photographs of her work, dating back several years – he admired the care she’d taken in pushing back the history of her legend – and some deadly-dull screeds about big tech, poverty and media ownership. Photographs of her were few, except those in which she was wearing round dark glasses or her face was partially hidden by her long brown hair, which, at work, she wore in a knot, or rather haphazardly clipped. Her wardrobe was unvarying – light brown, calf-length suede coat, or a navy-blue blouson with the GreenState bird logo hot-pressed above her left breast. She favoured well-cut trousers, never jeans, and ankle boots, which pushed her height an inch over six feet, or black trainers, which he came to recognise were a sign that she’d leave the office at some point during the day.

He had no contact with her at GreenState – his was a lowly volunteer’s job replying to questions on the campaign website with a set of standard responses that were designed to elicit money – but he was in a position to observe her most of the day, and he was pretty certain that she had not yet noticed him. She was self-contained and never involved herself with office politics. Her colleagues were wary of her because of her sharp tongue and she was no respecter of status or the conventional NGO politesse where everyone’s opinion is indulged, however empty or lacking in evidence. He heard her murmur to GreenState’s director of campaigns, a man named Desmond who Samson heartily disliked, ‘We’re doing good work, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to call you out when you’re talking crap.’

Her behaviour was tolerated because she was good at what she did. She had fluent French and German and often appeared in the morning having completed, overnight, the work that would take others a couple of days. She wrote video scripts, advertising briefs and focused on GreenState’s messaging, for which reason she often took meetings outside the office with agencies providing their services free. No one asked where she was going, or why. Not even the ridiculous busybody Desmond.

Samson resigned himself to a fruitless wait and let his gaze travel the breadth of the five-street intersection. The regulars on the street were beginning to be familiar to him – addicts, with sleeping bags round their necks, scrambling for deals beneath the rail bridge, north of the Edgar Building; an abandoned young man handing out religious leaflets on the traffic island; two glacially moving homeless men; and the team of Roma beggars who looked as though they might all be related. The Junction was a twenty-minute walk from the vast wealth of the City of London, but a different universe. No one made much money here: the buildings were tired, rubbish was piled everywhere, and people struggled. But for all that, it had a palpable life force that Samson admired. It reminded him of the Middle East – his native Lebanon.

The thin drizzle outside turned into rain, but it was lunch hour and the streets weren’t any less busy. His phone went. It was one of Macy’s assistants, asking him for a meeting, or conference call, at 7 p.m. Samson opted for the meeting. He wanted to be in the room for the call with the States.

‘What’s going on, Imogen?’

She ignored him. ‘Seven p.m. prompt, Paul, so if you have any concern about not being here, I’ll send you the dial-in.’

Samson glanced at his watch – it was 1.30 p.m. – and he assured her he’d make it. ‘And you can tell Macy that we’ll need to review the current job,’ he added.

As he hung up, a big, freakish fellow wearing a black leather kilt, panel leggings and a filthy American sports blouson, appeared outside the café and looked through the window, trying to see past his reflection. His face was broad – vaguely Slavic. Samson noted a missing upper-left tooth and a pierced nose. The man turned away and, with a kind of jig, began thrusting a crumpled cup at passers-by, who had absolutely no problem ignoring him.

‘The state of that!’ said a woman behind the counter. ‘He was someone’s sweet little baby once. Imagine!’

Samson wasn’t interested. Something had made him straighten in his chair.

No conscious process in him asked: am I watching a surveillance operation here? But the conviction that he was arrived fully formed in his mind. Two men, across the street, one with his hand in an empty knapsack, kept glancing at the Edgar Building then looking away. An Asian couple on his side of the street pretended to talk but were surely communicating with others – both wore microphone earbuds. A fourth and maybe a fifth were separately threading their way through the stalled traffic towards the gates of Mo’s Tyre and Body Shop, which lay between the Edgar Building and a rail bridge to the north. The whole thing could be accidental, but the choreography looked right, and the operation seemed to be focused on the Edgar Building. He paid up without removing his eyes from the street then walked to the door. Still inside the café, he craned to see north and south of the Junction, wondered if either of the illegally parked vans was part of the surveillance team and whether the operation had been mounted by the police, MI5, or was a joint endeavour. There were at least eight watchers around the Junction and he even considered the beggar capering a few paces away might be part of the team.

The thought that he didn’t want Zoe walking into this situation arrived a few moments before a cab pulled up awkwardly at the mouth of Cooper’s Court, by which time he had taken out two phones, copied the number for Zoe that he had acquired at campaign headquarters from his personal phone into the field of a new text message on a burner phone and written, ‘Do NOT enter the Edgar. Leave the area now!’ As he looked up, the cab came to a halt and he saw someone paying. A flash of the suede coat inside the cab – it was Zoe. He sent the text. She got out and looked around in preparation to cross over to the Edgar Building. Samson decided he would have to break cover and get her away from the building – some change in the barometric pressure around the Junction, which maybe only a former intelligence officer would be aware of, told him that the team was ready to make a move. He stepped out of the café and went three paces, but saw that she had pulled out her phone and was reading as she walked. She stopped suddenly on the pedestrian crossing, looked around and turned to head back to Samson’s side of the road. He moved back. At the moment she reached the curb, as yet apparently without recognizing Samson, who was no more than a few metres away, he became aware of a blurred movement in his right field. The beggar was on the move and coming towards them fast. His hood was raised against the rain; both arms were bared and he now wore gloves. In his right hand, held low, there was a blade about six inches long.

Samson’s basic knowledge of self-defence came from a course taken as an SIS officer. He’d only made use of it properly once – in Syria, a man came at him with a knife when he was carrying cash to help trace and free the Kurdish-American doctor Aysel Hisami. Samson had seen that attack coming and had had time to step outside the thrust of the knife, seize the man’s wrist with his right hand and go to work on his face, clawing at his eyes with his left. It had proved remarkably effective and he’d quickly disarmed and knocked out the young fighter, a member of his escort into ISIS-held territory who had been looking for an opportunity to get Samson alone for the previous twenty-four hours. Now Samson had less warning and he had no idea which way the man planned to go. He instinctively blocked the way to Zoe, on his left, and shouted for her to run, but that meant he was still inside the line of thrust. Someone screamed. Samson moved to his right, grabbing the man’s upper arm, forcing it away and, at the same time, delivering a punch to his Adam’s apple, then several rapid upward blows to his chin with the heel of his hand. He was much stronger than Samson and he easily wrestled his arm free. Samson moved back. The man came at him again and Samson aimed a kick at his groin and, taking hold of his upper arm for a second time, headbutted him in the face. These two blows did something to stall the attack, but he was aware that his back was against the café’s window and he had nowhere to go. People had scattered from the pavement and there was now no sign of Zoe. He ducked to his left, but the man pursued him with a boxer’s dance, jabbing the air with the knife. Samson was aware of two new sounds – a woman behind him shouting for the man to drop the knife and the roar of a motorbike that had mounted the pavement and skidded in a 180-degree turn to face away from him. He looked round to see one of the watchers aiming a gun at the beggar, feet splayed and both hands holding the gun. She was a police officer and knew what she was doing. He looked back for the man’s reaction. He simply shrugged and began to back away, smiling with the certainty that the officer could not possibly take a shot at him with so many people about. The beggar leapt on to the back of the bike, took the helmet handed to him by the driver and they sped along the pavement, cleaved a path in the lunchtime crowds then darted through a gap in the traffic and went south.

It was the same motorbike Samson had seen waiting in the tunnel by Embankment station, a ten-year-old Suzuki with the maker’s blue-and-white livery beneath the grime – as old and unremarkable as his own lowly Honda. He had obviously been followed, because the knifeman had arrived outside the café before Zoe. This interested him, for at no stage on his journey from Embankment station had he seen the bike in his mirrors, which led him to one conclusion – his Honda must have been fitted with a tracking device. This thought was followed by a more arresting one – unless they were using him to lead them to Zoe, which was, at least, a possibility, he was the target. But this made no sense whatsoever. What mattered was that Zoe Freemantle had got away from the vicinity of the Edgar Building unharmed and unidentified by the police. That was what he was paid for.

The woman officer who had drawn her gun was anxious to get back to her operation and hurriedly took down his name and address and said someone would be along to talk to him about the ‘incident’. Samson gave her false details and, as soon as she had left, went to his bike, unlocked the helmet box and placed the key in the ignition. Whatever the police presence around the Junction, it wouldn’t be long before the bike, together with the tracker, was stolen from Cooper’s Court. He checked that no police had gone back to the café then left the area, noticing that the minor matter of a knife attack at the scene had not disrupted the surveillance operation.

---

He went straight back to Westminster because he needed to check whether the GreenState building was being watched and he also wanted to know Zoe’s reaction to finding him at the Junction. She may not have recognised him immediately, but he had shouted her name during the attack, so she was bound to have spotted him and it would be immediately obvious that he’d been shadowing her. That meant this particular job was over, which was a relief to him, yet there were questions he wanted answered. She took care with anti-surveillance routines, but was she aware of regular attempts to follow her? Had she ever seen the man in the black leather kilt before? And what was going on in the Edgar Building that interested the police so much?

There was no sign of any surveillance outside the building, so Samson entered and went back to his desk in the volunteer room, which also served as an overflow for the digital department, and returned to where he’d left off addressing inquiries to the organisation’s main site. GreenState’s purpose was to advocate a revolutionary new deal, zero-growth economy and a transformation of the way people live and consume. In reality, it was a number of different campaigns all housed in the same building – there were the GreenState Economics Foundation, GreenState Water, GreenState Climate Research, GS-STOP, which campaigned for a total ban on trophy hunting, and GSMedical, which sniped at big pharma. The organisation, Samson realised, was very large, given its humble origins as an NGO limited to activism in the state of California, very rich and also all rather opaque. But in its private mission, GreenState was unwaveringly clear. As a likeable volunteer organiser named Rob had explained during Samson’s first week, GreenState only gave a damn about three things: data, getting things for free and looking after its own image. Rob cheerfully admitted that the climate emergency and mass extinction of species probably came fairly low down the list of the organisation’s priorities because, well, it was like all campaigns – the success of the organisation rather than the crusade mattered most to the senior people.

GreenState had a thirst for data, for which reason Samson’s job this past three weeks had been to answer every incoming email with a customised appeal for money, followed by a request, delivered in the most unctuous and manipulative language, for the correspondent to complete a questionnaire on their lifestyle, beliefs, income, social-media engagement and environmental activism that would allow GreenState ‘to better serve the planet and its people’. It was surprising how many of those who turned down the request for an immediate donation were happy to complete the detailed survey. ‘If we don’t get them to donate now, we get them later,’ Rob told him while going through the procedures for replying to emails and Web enquiries. ‘Whenever there are floods, wildfires, news stories about the unprecedented release of methane from the tundra, etcetera, we bang out appeals to different groups of respondents based on the data they’ve given us in the questionnaire. It’s pretty goddamn effective.’ In the guileless responses, which included mobile numbers, private email addresses and income, and at times ready donations, Samson saw Rob was right. GreenState was a cash cow with a lot of political power that could be deployed internationally, nationally, or at constituency level, although it never actually caused much trouble to the government. ‘We work on the inside to reform,’ said Rob.

The operation intrigued Samson and when he was waiting for Zoe to make a move he researched the company structure. He used to do this in his brief career as a banker before being recruited by SIS, and he was surprised to find that there were no annual reports because GreenState was now owned by a series of private companies, the original evangelicals having long since been removed. The whole was controlled by an American parent company called GreenSpace Dynamics US Inc., which in turn was run by a tiny board of business figures, about whom there was also very little public information. GreenState made a lot of noise about the good it was doing but was remarkably silent about its own affairs.

Late in the afternoon, Zoe appeared in the office, looking stricken. Samson wasn’t close enough to see if she had been crying, but thought she might have been – maybe she had been shocked by the attack in the street and thought that she was the target, but that didn’t seem in keeping with the character he’d observed. Instead of removing her coat, she strode down the aisle of the open-plan campaign centre with her bag slung over her shoulder. A few minutes later she came back and went straight to the exit without stopping. He couldn’t follow without making it obvious and, besides, she seemed too upset to have the conversation he wanted.

A minute or two later, Desmond appeared. ‘A word with you, Mr Ash, if you wouldn’t mind.’ He signalled to the two youths from Digital, who made themselves scarce, and checked his reflection in the glass partition. He sucked the ends of his reading glasses, toyed with one of the grey curls that framed his face then regretfully left his reflection to its own devices. ‘We have had a complaint, Mr Ash. I’m afraid I have no alternative, as Director of Campaigns, but to ask you to leave.’

Samson said nothing.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘Yes, that’s fine – I’ll leave.’

‘You don’t want to hear the nature of the complaint?’

Samson shook his head, got up and hooked his jacket over his shoulder.

The Director of Campaigns was not going to be deprived of the pleasure. ‘I’ll tell you anyway. We’ve had a complaint from a member of staff – a much-valued and trusted member of staff – that you have been stalking her during your time here and that, further, she believes you volunteered at GreenState in order to carry out your campaign of harassment. It will be obvious to you that we cannot allow this situation to continue. I will inform Security that if you try to gain entry to these offices, or are seen loitering in the vicinity, they should call the police. Is that clear?’

Samson shrugged and smiled.

‘Have you nothing to say?’

‘Nope,’ said Samson, brushing past him.

‘There’s one other thing. We’re aware that you have used your time here to investigate the organisation – Web searches are recorded, as I’m sure you know. We had you marked down as an undesirable and you would, in any case, have been told we no longer required your services at the end of the week. GreenState will defend itself, Mr Ash. Do not trifle with us.’

Desmond’s neck was flushed and his Adam’s apple was working furiously. Samson smiled from the doorway. ‘You look like you need a rest, Desmond. Have a good evening.’

As he left the building, the burner phone in his pocket pinged with a message from Zoe. ‘Now please fuck off, whoever you are, and leave this to me.’

He replied, ‘Thanks for that. Whatever you’re doing in the Edgar, you’re being watched. Stay safe.’

CHAPTER 3

Survivors of the Bridge

It was still raining when he arrived in Mayfair. The bookings for his restaurant, Cedar, were not good for that evening and it seemed unlikely that there would be any change, unless there was late trade from the Curzon Cinema nearby. Ivan, who had worked for Samson’s parents before him, and without whom he couldn’t run what was described as Mayfair’s premier Lebanese restaurant, appeared five minutes later and hovered at the door to the office as Samson began to go through the day’s invoices. ‘What is it, my friend?’

‘Mr Nyman is downstairs. He’s been waiting half an hour. I have served him coffee.’

‘Jesus, that’s all I need. Let’s make him wait a bit longer.’

‘He knows you’re here.’

‘Tell him I’m busy. I don’t want him thinking he can drop in any time.’

‘He’s booked a table for later. He is to be joined by a lady friend.’

‘Nyman with a woman! It can only be his sidekick, Sonia Fell. Make sure they order the ’89 Musar. That should deter him from coming again.’ The materialisation in his life of Peter Nyman, now of indeterminate status at SIS but always capable of making trouble, was never good news. After being shot or, rather, winged in a street in Tallinn, Nyman and his colleagues had tried to put the blame on Samson and have him arrested by the Estonian authorities. The last time Samson saw him, he was cowering in the street outside the club when Adam Crane – aka Aleksis Chumak – was lifted two years before.

He looked down at the message notifications accumulated on his phone. ‘Give me a quarter of an hour, Ivan. Thanks.’

There were two texts from Macy Harp and one from Macy’s assistant, Imogen, all of which told him that Macy’s and his conference call with Denis would now take place at nine that evening, and several texts on an encrypted app from Detective Inspector Hayes, Samson’s friend in the Met and occasional lover. ‘Call me!’ they all instructed.

He dialled Hayes’s number. She was busy and said she would call back, which she did in under a minute.

‘Samson, were you in north London this afternoon?’

‘Why?’

‘I bloody knew it was you.’

‘What’re you saying?’

‘You wrestling with a lunatic in a skirt and with a bloody great knife.’ She paused to wait for a response, which wasn’t forthcoming. ‘Look at your email – there’s one from my private address.’

He opened his laptop, found the email and clicked on the attachment, film taken with a phone camera. Someone outside the café had caught part of the fight and had evidently moved to get a better shot of the incident, although it was jerky footage and Samson was unrecognisable. There was much more screaming than he remembered and his assailant looked bigger. The man’s escape was filmed, too. And the number of the Suzuki was clearly visible.

‘You watching it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I knew it was you because of that jacket I gave you.’

‘Ah.’

‘Well, at least you’re wearing it. I thought you didn’t like it.’ He didn’t, but had worn it

Reviews for The Old Enemy

[dokfintong · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lovely charactersI read and greatly enjoyed "Firefly" in 2018. I'd been working with refugees in that part of the world and felt that the story rang true. Unfortunately I missed the intermediate novel "White Hot Silence". Nevertheless, this third book was not hard to follow.As I did with "Firefly", I find the characters here to be fully realized, likable, people, whose choices are rational, even if we don't agree with them. The story is believable as a spy novel. The pace is not outlandish.I think that I might be able to say that I like these books as well as any spy novels I have read in years. I recommend them to you.I received a digital review copy of "The Old Enemy" by Henry Porter from Grove Atlantic through NetGalley.com.